NPD: Android Surging, BlackBerry Falling, Apple Flat — Here's a chart pretty much guaranteed to get teeth grinding in Cupertino - new data from NPD showing Android extending its lead as America's most popular mobile operating system. — The consumer research group says that Google's software …

Promoted Tweets: Testing in the Timeline — When we launched Promoted Tweets in April, we outlined our plan for gradually rolling them out in all of the places people experience Twitter: first in search on Twitter.com, later in search through our partners, and eventually in the user timeline.

Samsung Galaxy Tab review — The story of the Galaxy Tab has been quite a saga, to say the least. In fact, it was actually back in May that we first heard rumblings of Samsung's plans to unleash a 7-inch Android tablet much like its Galaxy S phones, but it was only after months of painful teasing …

Why I quit Google to join Facebook: Lars Rasmussen — Lars Rasmussen, the Sydney-based co-founder of Google Maps has spoken publicly for the first time about why he quit his job and joined the growing band of high profile Googlers who have switched allegiances to Facebook.

Blekko's SEO Tools: What Information Do They Provide? — The new search engine Blekko just launched, and it's making SEO-related data that it has found during its crawling and indexing of the web available for all sites. Just what does it include and how useful is it? — Accessing SEO Data

PDC and Silverlight — [This blog post is from Bob Muglia, President of the Server and Tools Division at Microsoft] — Last week, we held our PDC conference on the Microsoft campus in Redmond, Wash. We also streamed it online using Silverlight (with both live and on-demand sessions).

Reddit head leaves Conde Nast for Hipmunk — Christopher Slowe, a five-year veteran of Reddit who has been in charge of the Conde Nast-owned social news site since the departure of its founders Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian last year, announced on Monday that he's leaving his post.

Amazon's 3G Kindle leaps ‘Great Firewall of China’ — HONG KONG — Amazon's Kindle 3G e-reader is being snapped up on China's grey market as it has an extra special advantage for customers — it automatically leaps the so-called “Great Firewall” of state web censorship.

Did Apple pay big bucks in iAds settlement? — A trademark lawsuit filed against Apple by a Web advertising firm over the term “iAds” was quietly settled in July. — No one has disclosed exactly how the case was resolved but Apple now owns the “iAds” trademark, and last week …

Amazon Slashes AWS S3 Prices Up To 19% — Looks like Amazon has reduced the storage costs on its popular Amazon Web Services' “Simple Storage Service” (S3) yet again. As of November 1st, S3 users in the US Standard, EU - Ireland, and APAC - Singapore regions will be paying up to 19% less in overall monthly storage charges.

Browser momentum: Chrome has it, IE doesn't — Chrome sliced away another half a percentage point of usage share from rival browsers in October 2010. — For browser watchers, October was a continuation of previous trends: Internet Explorer lost share to Chrome while Firefox and Opera idled and Safari edged upward.

Intel Grants Rare Access to Start-Up — Chip Giant Will Manufacture Achronix's Semiconductors Using Most Advanced Production Process — Intel Corp. has agreed to make chips for a semiconductor start-up, the first time the Silicon Valley giant has given another company access to its most advanced production processes.

EBay Attempts to Clean Up the Clutter — Redesign This Week Uses Technological Overhaul to Organize Thousands of Listings — As eBay Inc. prepares for a critical holiday shopping season, the company this week plans to unveil new elements of an overhaul in how shoppers find and buy products on its Web site.